Today we’d like to introduce you to Louis Grayson.
Louis, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Growing up in the restaurant business and having the opportunity to travel to many states and countries widen my food experiences. I knew I wanted to do something in the food industry but was stubborn at the time and never wanted to get back into the restaurant business after seeing the hardship my family went through.
My tipping point for my decision to start a restaurant was in Washington D.C., I entered a food competition called Launch Pad Mess Hall. This was its own version of a top chef mix with a shark tank. I got into the finals with 4 other vendors and got runners-up, peoples choice award. After this, I knew I wanted to open my own business into the food industry.
Later that year, I eventually moved back to Florida to help my family with their restaurant. My mother wanted to semi-retire and the family was first generation immigrants who did well for what they had. I wanted to bring back the experience I learned from my work in the corporate world and try to incorporate structure and consistency to the business.
While still having the urge to open my own business, I decided to open Ramen Lab Eatery. I was a bit hesitant on opening this concept at first as this would be the first ramen joint in the area, it was a fast-casual concept and serving hot soup all year round when the weather is sunny and hot all year round. However, this was a big hit and even during the summer, people were enjoying ramen.
The menu consists of all my favorite items from my travelers from my previous jobs. I knew I wanted to incorporate poke and other rice dishes on the menu to have a diverse menu reaching taste like Japanese, Korean and Thai infuse. After all, we are a laboratory.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Not the smoothest of roads, some of our challenges we faced were:
– During construction, since we were going to have the first ever art mural in the Boca Raton area, we had to go through the city several times for approval.
– Consistency was a major issue at the beginning. As I knew this was a dish not many people had down here, that they would compare to a New York, California or Japan ramen taste that they had. Our flavors would sometime be inconsistent as the broth and ramen we make from scratch. Broth we stew only bones, meat, and veggies and sometimes depending on the piece of our meat we ordered (less fat or more fat) definitely affected the taste and customers realized that. Our ramen is only made of flour and water and was hard to keep consistent with the temperature when we would have it out to cook and how long to cook it for.
– Once opened many people are new to the concept and we are constantly having questions of how does this work, do we order at the counter or will there be a server to the table.
– Also, staff was a challenge as most staff down here never had experience in the type of cuisine and never cooked or made ramen before.
Please tell us about Ramen Lab Eatery.
We specialize in ramen. We make our ramen noodles and soup broth from scratch with no preservative or added salt or any other type of enhancing flavoring. We use all natural ingredients. Ramen noodles are made with only flour and water. Broths made with bones, meat, and veggies and are stewed for several hours.
Soup can be stewed for over 12 hours especially our Tonkatsu broth (pork broth). We incorporate traditional ramen from Japan and also have infused ramen like our 5 spice duck, which are customers hit. We try to cater to the laboratory feel and experiment in our food to try to have a special once a month and to play with our ingredients and dishes but the highest quality.
We only work with local companies and distributor for our produce and all our products. We try to be as Eco-friendly as we can.
So far what set us apart are:
– First ramen restaurant in the area.
– Only restaurant in the Palm Beach and Broward area that makes our own ramen noodles.
– Only place in South Florida that make our own Soba noodles and udon noodles.
– The only fast-casual ramen restaurant in Florida
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I don’t think I would do anything too different. Probably would have like to focus on the small details more when setting up the restaurant for open. Such as getting our delivery system set up, or better preparing our social media game and our advertising.
Pricing:
- Ramen Tonkotsu ($13) – Rich thick pork broth, chashu pork belly, soft boiled egg, bamboo shoot, kikurage, scallion and nori
- Tuna/Salmon Poke ($12) – hawaiian poke, spicy krab, seaweed salad, avacado, edamame, pickled ginger and nori
- Udon ($12) – light broth, crispy tofu, enoki mushroom, scallion and togarashi season
- 5 Spice Duck Ramen ($16) – Grandma’s recipe five spice duck, bean sprouts, bok choy, garlic oil and micro cilantro
Contact Info:
- Address: 100 NE 2nd St Boca Raton, FL 33432
- Website: www.RamenLabEatery.com
- Phone: 561-750-4448
- Email: Ramenlab.fl@gmail.com
- Instagram: @Ramenlabeatery
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RamenLabEatery/
- Twitter: @Ramenlabeatery
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ramen-lab-eatery-boca-raton-3
- Other: peach-media.myshopify.com
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